


The Line Between Need & Hate

by darwinsdonut



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Borderline Smut, Character Study, M/M, Pre-UNSC Felix, Pre-UNSC Locus, Sociopathic Felix, Young Locus, young Felix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 14:36:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14427579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darwinsdonut/pseuds/darwinsdonut
Summary: Felix has never needed anyone- and he never wanted to. Locus didn't exactly give him a choice.





	The Line Between Need & Hate

_“You’re not terribly important to me.”_

_~American Psycho_

Felix never quite understood empathy. 

Some days he wanted so badly to _feel,_ so intensely to burn and pine and ache as he’d read of others doing. But the want rang hollow, a bell among the emptiness, and his face fell flat before want could draw the faintest crumble. When left alone, he could sigh, he could roll his eyes, he could drum his fingertips on the countertop. Then if anyone suddenly appeared, he’d look bored, unaffected, distant. 

Other days, Felix just wanted less to be expected of him. 

It had become effortless after seventeen years’ practice to fake the necessary smiles, laughs, or frowns. Most who knew him thought him an asshole anyway, and that made it easier. He drifted from group to group, never lingering anywhere long enough for anyone to notice the lack of warmth. To notice that he didn’t connect as they did. He was a charismatic entity, a ghost haunting different energies, always seeking the best opportunity for a thrill. At his best, he was a poltergeist; at his worst- a leech. 

But lately- lately there was something _else._

For the first time in his life, he needed someone else, and that brought its own peculiar counterpart: _fear._

It wasn’t love like he’d read of it. Sam didn’t make his heart pound or his pupils dilate or his throat go dry. It wasn’t wistful sighs and long nights and sweet dreams. He still didn’t feel fluttery warmth upon hearing love songs. No- love songs weren’t even the right example of his relationship with Sam. It wasn’t ripped jeans and starlight; it was bruised necks and bitemarks. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t want as he had known want. But Felix couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea of need. 

When Felix first met Sam, he was intrigued. The broad shoulders and silent glare held secrets and shadows Felix wanted to pry into the light, lay vulnerable before the sun, and then abandon for the world to mock. Sam was so guarded, so- so uptight and defensible, that Felix just had to pick the lock and reveal those innermost thoughts. At first he thought it was how Sam seemed so inhuman, and Felix saw himself there; now, somehow, Felix found he needed to know. Needed to see Sam, talk to him, listen to him, and he pretended it was still about finding answers, even though he knew it had somehow become so much deeper than that. 

Even now, standing idle in his father’s shop, Felix couldn’t tear his thoughts from Sam. Samuel Ortez. Sammy. _Locus,_ he had been saying he’d change his name to. So when Felix learned Sam would be taking a false name, he abandoned ‘Isaac Gates’ just as easily, shedding the name and emerging a new person. And he hated how quickly he’d mimicked, mirroring the actions of his newest admiration. 

Admiration didn’t quite describe it, though- obsession rang too strong, and infatuation held connotations Felix had never understood. Fixation was the closest word he could find. Words, words, words- cluttering up his brain- never the right words. Diction puzzled him sometimes; he could weave the smoothest phrases and his wit never failed, but there were some emotions he’d yet to have to mimic. Perhaps Sam would change that. He was relying too much on Sam, on Sam changing him, developing him, on wanting to mimic Sam- 

_Locus,_ he corrected. Locus. Locus was the machine, the beast, the stone guardian the broad shoulders suggested. 

As if summoned by the thoughts like a devil out of old proverb, the shop door opened and welcomed the subject of Felix’s reflections. Locus offered no pretense, striding directly to the counter. 

“Felix. We need to talk.” 

Felix met Locus’ burning eyes, coals among desert sky. “I’m working.” 

“We can wa-” 

“Let’s go. This is probably more important.” 

Felix tossed his jacket over his shoulder and followed Sam out of the shop, into the street where a cool rain fell hazy over the street. Sam led him a block down the cracked pavement, and they lingered near their favorite street-corner, the one with lewd graffiti on a dumpster in plain sight and usually more than a few night-walkers. 

He eyed the impressive frame of Sam- _Locus-_ as they stood there, Something primal awoke in him, the same line between fear and hate he usually toed on days like today. Days when his mind wouldn’t shut the fuck up and let him forget how much he needed to be around Locus. He needed to know if Locus was as inhuman as he seemed, or if it truly was a front and they weren’t actually anything alike. 

He could barely admit it even to himself, but at this point he hardly cared. He just wanted to know. 

He tried a new tactic when they reached a quiet alley and he couldn’t shut down the fear. There was one confirmed method of removing that disturbance from his mind. 

Felix turned the fire in his eyes from hate to desire and launched himself at Locus. His fingers latched to the muscular neck while his lips pressed to Locus’. He pressed the broad-shouldered man to the wall, feeling Locus give easily to his commanding movements. His torso pressed to Locus and rolled, a smirk toying on Felix’s lips as he trailed his teeth to Locus’ jaw. Locus gasped, lifting a hand to clutch Felix’s wrist and remove his hand from Locus’ throat. Felix met Locus’ eyes with a twisted grin. 

“Felix,” Locus growled. “Now’s not the time.” 

Felix blinked long black eyelashes at Locus, who appeared entirely unamused by his antics. The sudden sporadic quality of his heartbeat did nothing to convince Felix not to simply fuck Locus in the alley and go back to work before he could remember why he was trying to distract himself. 

“Why not?” Felix asked, trying for a sultry tone. He leaned close and hissed, “What’s stopping you?” 

Locus planted a firm hand on Felix’s chest and said, “I’m enlisting.” 

The words caught him off-guard. 

Felix froze for a second, thousands of thoughts processing in the tiniest heartbeat. 

“Okay- I am, too.” 

“Felix- this isn’t a joke.” 

Felix met his eyes. “I know. I’m not joking. If you’re going, I am.” 

Locus’ brow twitched inward. “That’s all it takes for you?” 

“Yes. Now can I return to what I was doing?” 

He buried his face in Locus’ neck, and this time Locus gave in entirely to the sucking lips and grazing teeth. Felix lost himself for a time, indulging in salty flesh and grasping hands and chaotic moans… 

* * *

Felix could dissociate through sex long enough to forget the conversation, but the thoughts remained later. As night fell, it all came rushing back. 

He had never been the type to do something as reckless as enlist during a war. He had never been the type to stick by someone’s side. And it wasn’t like he was some forlorn lover determined to die with his Romeo. No. That was stupid shit. 

It was… Somehow, though Felix innately knew Locus could destroy him, Felix couldn’t bear to be apart from him. He couldn’t identify the precise moment that shift in priorities had occurred. He was still selfish- that much he was sure of- but he understood now the inexplicably interwoven trails of his life and Locus’. They existed as the same entity split into two, alternating roles as the moment demanded, the reckless one and the planner, the controlled and the controlling, the selfish and the selfless. At their hearts- they were both reckless, controlling, and selfish. Felix, in the alley, had understood that no one else would ever see him as truly as Locus could. 

Perhaps it was a split-second decision and he should reconsider. Even as he tried, thought trails vanished into the mist of Locus’ smouldering gaze, the thrust of Locus’ hips, the tantalizing silence that hovered around Locus’ tongue. Maybe it was sex. But mostly it was who they were as people. 

Because Felix saw himself in Locus. 

And Felix couldn’t stand being a monster alone.


End file.
